Now the shock on his face was turning to anger—the blind, obdurate sort of anger she had seen on his face so frequently lately. Not just over the big things, but over the little ones as well—a woman going through a traffic light on the yellow, a cop who held up traffic just before it was their turn to go—but it came to her now with all the force of a revelation that his anger, corrosive and so unlike the rest of Arnie’s personality, was always associated with the car. With Christine.
“'If you love me you’ll get rid of it,” he repeated. “You know who you sound like?”
“No, Arnie.”
“My mother, that’s who you sound like.”
“I’m sorry.” She would not allow herself to be drawn, neither would she defend herself with words or end it by just going into the house. She might have been able to if she didn’t feel anything for him, but she did. Her original impressions—that behind the quiet shyness Arnie Cunningham was good and decent and kind (and maybe sexy as well)—had not changed much. It was the car, that was all. That was the change. It was like watching a strong mind slowly give way under the influence of some evil, corroding, addictive drug.
Arnie ran his hands through his snow-dusted hair, a characteristic gesture of bewilderment and anger. “You had a bad choking spell in the car, okay, I can understand that you don’t feel great about it. But it was the hamburger, Leigh, that’s all. Or maybe not even that. Maybe you were trying to talk while you were chewing or inhaled at just the wrong second or something. You might as well blame Ronald McDonald. People choke on their food every now and then I that’s all. Sometimes they die. You didn’t. Thank God for that. But to blame my car—!”
Yes, it all sounded perfectly plausible. And was. Except that something was going on behind Arnie’s grey eyes. A frantic something that was not precisely a lie, but… rationalization? A wilful turning away from the truth?
“Arnie,” she said, “I’m tired and my chest hurts and I’ve got a headache and I think I’ve only got the strength to say this once. Will you listen?”
“If it’s about Christine, you’re wasting your breath, he said, and that stubborn, mulish look was on his face again. “It’s crazy to blame her and you know it is.”
“Yes, I know it’s crazy, and I know I’m wasting my breath,” Leigh said. “But I’m asking you to listen.”
“I’ll listen.”
She took a deep breath, ignoring the pull in her chest. She looked at Christine, idling a plume of white vapour into the thickly falling snow, then looked hastily away. Now it was the parking lights that looked like eyes: the yellow eyes of a lynx.
“When I choked… when I was choking… the instrument panel… the lights on it changed. They changed. They were… no, I won’t go that far, but they looked like eyes.”
He laughed, a short bark in the cold air. In the house a curtain was pulled aside, someone looked out, and then the curtain dropped back again.
“If that hitchhiker… that Gottfried fellow… if he hadn’t been there, I would have died, Arnie. I would have died.” She searched his eyes with her own and pushed ahead. Once, she told herself. I only have to say this once. “You told me that you worked in the cafeteria at LHS your first three years. I’ve seen the Heimlich Manoeuvre poster on the door to the kitchen. You must have seen it too. But you didn’t try that on me, Arnie. You were getting ready to clap me on the back. That doesn’t work. I had a job in a restaurant back in Massachusetts, and the first thing they teach you, even before they teach you the Heimlich Manoeuvre, is that clapping a choking victim on the back doesn’t work.”
“What are you saying?” he asked in a thin, out-of-breath voice.
She didn’t answer; only looked at him. He met her gaze for only a moment, and then his eyes—angry, confused, almost haunted—shifted away.
“Leigh, people forget things. You’re right, I should have used it. But if you had the course, you know you can use it on yourself.” Arnie laced his hands together into a fist with one thumb sticking up and pressed against his diaphragm to demonstrate. “It’s just that in the heat of the moment, people forget—”
“Yes, they do. And you seem to forget a lot of things in that car. Like how to be Arnie Cunningham.”
Arnie was shaking his head. “You need time to think this over, Leigh. You need—”
“That is just what I don’t need!” she said with a fierceness she wouldn’t have believed she still had left in her. “I never had a supernatural experience in my life—I never even believed in stuff like that—but now I wonder just what’s going on and what’s happening to you. They looked like eyes, Arnie. And later… afterward… there was a smell, A horrible, rotten smell.”
He recoiled.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
No. I don’t have the slightest idea.”
“You just jumped as if the devil had twisted your ear.”
“You’re imagining things,” Arnie said hotly. “A lot of things.”
“That smell was there. And there are other things as well. Sometimes your radio won’t get anything but that oldies station—”
